


unbreakable

by keouil



Series: we can be divine [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Team Minato-centric, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:15:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26681248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keouil/pseuds/keouil
Summary: kakashi, rin, obito and the world that tore them apart.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi & Nohara Rin & Uchiha Obito
Series: we can be divine [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1931971
Kudos: 55





	unbreakable

**Author's Note:**

> team minato, after.

that they were a little co-dependent on each other has become almost a running joke in the shinobi grape vine.

almost everyone poked fun at obito not being able to make any kind of decision without badgering minato about it for days, or that rin always aligned her hospital shifts for when kakashi came back from missions.

“maybe it was that thing last week,” genma offers. “they did come back a week late, who knows what happened then.”

“impossible!” gai bristled. “kakashi told me that was because obito took a kunai for him and they couldn’t risk moving him too fast.”

_(what the rest of them did not know, however, was obito didn’t just take a kunai – he took eight, actually. the ame nukenin was quite the weapons master. on top of that, he refused to let rin fully heal him because kakashi had a much bigger, gaping hole at the back of his thigh when he tried to cover minato who was busy fighting off what was obviously a clever shinobi who made a beeline for the team medic.)_

“no, it had to be before that,” asuma joins in. “we’re practically trained to be a little self-suicidal. but even they’re too much.”

“rin said their sensei intentionally starves them during training drills until they learn to work together.” kurenai blanches.

_(the day before their first team exercise, minato-sensei specifically told them not to eat breakfast because it would upset their tiny fragile stomachs, what with the exciting shinobi things they were going to do. it wasn’t until obito saw stars and rin got light-headed and kakashi couldn’t stand straight that they finally, reluctantly gave in - “how do we do this?”)_

* * *

in hindsight, maybe they were a little bit too collective than individualistic.

which is a great tool to have if they were normal genin living in a normal time without the risk of crossfire at every chance, but evidently this world had not given them that luxury. this was war and it was every man for himself.

and there is also only so much three barely out-of-diapers child soldiers can do unsupervised and heading for a suicide bridge mission alone should not have been one of them. the very notion of them having to make this choice spoke severely of the unforgiving time they had the tough luck being in - that instead of where to vacation next like normal children, they had to choose where they would be most comfortable dying in.

and because kakashi could practically hear the disappointment in minato-sensei’s voice for his eventual scolding _(also maybe he was kind of slowly warming up to obito’s dumbness and rin’s familiar presence in the hospital made check-ups less frightening)_ , he relents.

* * *

after kannabi, team minato struggle to be unbreakable.

obito grapples with cabin fever, rin rejects the hospital promotion, and kakashi drugs himself to sleep every night.

where obito is more than a little homesick and longs for the familiar warmth pulsating all throughout his village because this cave is always cold despite swirly reminding him every hour that _n_ _o, you couldn’t possibly know that because you can’t physically feel anything on your arm_ – he does feel it. he feels the loneliness deep-seated in his bones and he is tired of beating it out of him every night.

where rin is endlessly praised for her successful field transplant, but no one ever brings up the fact she had to do it on her dying best friend as his last dying wish because he was dying and is now dead. she sees their guarded hesitance, like they don’t know what to make of that unfortunate detail in an otherwise historic moment. for a moment she wishes she never said yes to shizune offering to cover her shift that day, but she went on the mission because she missed being with her team. and she can’t, for the life of her, accept anything else other than eternal grief as compensation.

where kakashi can’t close his eyes for two seconds without being violently hurled back into the feeling of rubble beneath his hands and dust in his eyes and the damning hopelessness of their entire situation. he beats the midnight restlessness _(rocks, eye veins, obito shaking the entire time)_ by pushing himself harder during training. and if that doesn’t work _(it never does)_ he forges rin’s signature on prescription-based sleeping pills, the kind that can mimic a good night’s sleep even if he hasn’t slept a day since that rock fell.

* * *

that this was the world they were given and the generation they were born in and the people they met, surely it could have been some joke.

they wait for the punch line, that somehow someone up there casted a cruel genjutsu they had the misfortune of locking eyes with because they never got to that point of being a team with a sharingan user, minato-sensei never had the chance to train them with it –

because obito was _practically dead_ and rin never wanted the strength the moment gave her when she needed to _take his eye out_ and kakashi regrets letting teamwork win because _look where it got them_.

* * *

team minato was never really a team.

no, what they really were are three students who just happened to perfectly fit into the standard academy formula for genin teams - a genius who could lead the way, a clever girl to act as the middle person, and a below-average idiot to learn from them.

if obito cared a little too much about rin because she was the first and only person who looked at him and saw him for who he could become, that was on him. 

if rin was the most logical person she knew and yet still couldn’t talk herself out of admiring how being good at everything came naturally for kakashi, that was on her. 

if kakashi was selfish for wanting to preserve whatever it was he saw in both of them, something bigger than himself - someone ultimately better, softer, human - that was on him.

* * *

after the dust has settled and the graves have been dug,

when there linger only ghosts of what the fourth’s great team could have been,

_maybe the world would be kinder next time._


End file.
